Changing how we think of someone – Letting go of prejudice
Last night I was finishing a novel while eating my dinner. If I am eating alone I frequently read a novel. I almost never read anything serious while eating although that is not quite true. It is often in novels that the author has the character speak some profound truth. The novel I was finishing last night was The Murder Man: A Novel, page 369. The chief character, Max Wolfe, says of his ex-wife, “…there is no greater stranger than someone you used to love.’’ Why is that? We might ask. It seems to me that for me, at least, when one learns to love someone romantically or non- romantically one create a story about that person in one’s head based upon what one thinks one has observed and experienced. One may see with a limited vision. Well, actually, I suppose that we always see with a limited vision. All my prejudices, my emotions and my hopes can create this person in my head. This person I create may or may not have much resemblance to the actual person. Still it is my truth and this is the person whom I learn to love. In some cases this may be romantic love and we might even have a commitment ceremony (legal marriage or otherwise) professing our willingness to be there for and with each other in good times and bad times. We think that we can predict no only what we will do when times are bad but what the other person will do. In the case with the character of Max Wolfe in the novel by Tony Parsons the person is his ex-wife and the mother of the daughter he is raising, Scout. His ex-wife- fell in love with another man, has children with than man and pays very little attention to her first child Scout who is being raised by Max. Max is never quite able to wrap his head around the fact that this person who helped to co-create this wonderful child; this person who promised to be there in good times and bad; this person has very little time, energy or heart for their daughter Scott. This person his ex-wife Anne is now seems to bear little resemblance to the person that he married and with whom he had a child. What is this woman? Certainly she is not the woman he had created in his head; the woman he thought she told him she was. Can people change that much? Could this be the same person or have they essentially changed who they are. Certainly, even Max is not so naïve as to think that just because one is married stops one from ever noticing an attractive person and even creating a little fantasy about what it might have been life to have an affair or a life with this other person. For Max, however, those sorts of momentary fantasies do not determine behavior. He is committed to his wife and to all those others that he loves. He would never end a relationship because of some little fantasy person. Thus, he cannot conceive that his person to whom he is married could do this. Yet, he is well aware that she did do it. She is gone. She has a new live new children with this other person and has little time or energy for their daughter Scout.
Max is detective. He knows that we humans are often not what we seem to be. He very psychologically sophisticated. Yet, he expects some people and things to be stable, even if intellectually he does not think that is reasonable.
I have often said about such situations that I have no place to put certain new information about a person. It does not fit. Certainly following my divorce from my son’s mother I discovered things about her, which did not fit into the picture I had formed of her. I am sure that she felt the same about me. To a lesser extent this was true of my second wife also. This has certainly been true of many of the extremely close friends I have and have had over the years. If they do something that is completely unexpected for the person I have created I do not know what to do with that information or how to relate to the person.
The bottom line is that it is very difficult for this human, even knowing what I know as someone trained in clinical psychology, to let go of his pre-conceptions of who a person is. This includes the prejudice or “truths” I may have learned at a very early age about myself, other individuals and other groups of people. I learned many things about gender differences, racial differences, cultural differences, class differences, mental health difference, intelligence differences and religious differences, among others starting at a very young age. Yet, I was not that old before I began to learn that others did not universally believe what I had been taught. This opened the door for me to begin to think differently. That was a beginning and at least insured that I would have a difficult time using the same justifications for my prejudices/habits of thinking, which I had learned as a child. Yet, here I am at 75 years of age, many, many decades later, still finding making assumptions about people or situations based on my old beliefs. The assumption may be as “simple” as immediately thinking male when someone mentions truck driver or some other profession. Yet, I have known female truck drivers since I was a very young man. A friend of mine from Oregon was a truck driver when she was a very young woman. She drove a logging truck. I knew other women who drove all sorts of vehicles on the farm. The cognitive part of my brain has had the new knowledge firmly in place for a very long time.
The fallacy of the people and groups I create in my head is that I can know another person or group of people. I cannot. Surely, as a social scientist I can form some conjectures or chart some typical patterns, but I cannot “know” another person or another group of people. Yet, if it is very convenient to act as if I can know that and to make broad assumptions about that person or group. Occasionally my predictions are true. When I visit a prison I will find that most inmates have learned to be very guarded. Yet, as any person who has been really present with inmates in any prison will tell you they are a very diverse group of people who do fit one’s preconceived notions. One of the reasons that folks serving in a war situation do not like to find or seem family photographs or photos on a phone of an “enemy” is that it makes them seem to much like them. This is the same reason we systematically teach folks getting ready for combat to call “the enemy” by such names ask “kooks”, “insurgents’, “Japs”, “Knouts” or whatever – anything to make them seem non-human and, thus, like us.
Last night I had a lovely note from a young man who was thanking me for never giving up on him. I wrote back that giving up on him would have been the same as giving up on myself and all others that I know. I further stated that my belief we are all interdependent; that we need each other to believe in us; to believe that we are more than we appear to me.
In that sense there are no real strangers. There are just people who show more of who they are whether it is comfortable for me or not. Sometimes I am the person show me that I am more than I thought I was!
Last night I was finishing a novel while eating my dinner. If I am eating alone I frequently read a novel. I almost never read anything serious while eating although that is not quite true. It is often in novels that the author has the character speak some profound truth. The novel I was finishing last night was The Murder Man: A Novel, page 369. The chief character, Max Wolfe, says of his ex-wife, “…there is no greater stranger than someone you used to love.’’ Why is that? We might ask. It seems to me that for me, at least, when one learns to love someone romantically or non- romantically one create a story about that person in one’s head based upon what one thinks one has observed and experienced. One may see with a limited vision. Well, actually, I suppose that we always see with a limited vision. All my prejudices, my emotions and my hopes can create this person in my head. This person I create may or may not have much resemblance to the actual person. Still it is my truth and this is the person whom I learn to love. In some cases this may be romantic love and we might even have a commitment ceremony (legal marriage or otherwise) professing our willingness to be there for and with each other in good times and bad times. We think that we can predict no only what we will do when times are bad but what the other person will do. In the case with the character of Max Wolfe in the novel by Tony Parsons the person is his ex-wife and the mother of the daughter he is raising, Scout. His ex-wife- fell in love with another man, has children with than man and pays very little attention to her first child Scout who is being raised by Max. Max is never quite able to wrap his head around the fact that this person who helped to co-create this wonderful child; this person who promised to be there in good times and bad; this person has very little time, energy or heart for their daughter Scott. This person his ex-wife Anne is now seems to bear little resemblance to the person that he married and with whom he had a child. What is this woman? Certainly she is not the woman he had created in his head; the woman he thought she told him she was. Can people change that much? Could this be the same person or have they essentially changed who they are. Certainly, even Max is not so naïve as to think that just because one is married stops one from ever noticing an attractive person and even creating a little fantasy about what it might have been life to have an affair or a life with this other person. For Max, however, those sorts of momentary fantasies do not determine behavior. He is committed to his wife and to all those others that he loves. He would never end a relationship because of some little fantasy person. Thus, he cannot conceive that his person to whom he is married could do this. Yet, he is well aware that she did do it. She is gone. She has a new live new children with this other person and has little time or energy for their daughter Scout.
Max is detective. He knows that we humans are often not what we seem to be. He very psychologically sophisticated. Yet, he expects some people and things to be stable, even if intellectually he does not think that is reasonable.
I have often said about such situations that I have no place to put certain new information about a person. It does not fit. Certainly following my divorce from my son’s mother I discovered things about her, which did not fit into the picture I had formed of her. I am sure that she felt the same about me. To a lesser extent this was true of my second wife also. This has certainly been true of many of the extremely close friends I have and have had over the years. If they do something that is completely unexpected for the person I have created I do not know what to do with that information or how to relate to the person.
The bottom line is that it is very difficult for this human, even knowing what I know as someone trained in clinical psychology, to let go of his pre-conceptions of who a person is. This includes the prejudice or “truths” I may have learned at a very early age about myself, other individuals and other groups of people. I learned many things about gender differences, racial differences, cultural differences, class differences, mental health difference, intelligence differences and religious differences, among others starting at a very young age. Yet, I was not that old before I began to learn that others did not universally believe what I had been taught. This opened the door for me to begin to think differently. That was a beginning and at least insured that I would have a difficult time using the same justifications for my prejudices/habits of thinking, which I had learned as a child. Yet, here I am at 75 years of age, many, many decades later, still finding making assumptions about people or situations based on my old beliefs. The assumption may be as “simple” as immediately thinking male when someone mentions truck driver or some other profession. Yet, I have known female truck drivers since I was a very young man. A friend of mine from Oregon was a truck driver when she was a very young woman. She drove a logging truck. I knew other women who drove all sorts of vehicles on the farm. The cognitive part of my brain has had the new knowledge firmly in place for a very long time.
The fallacy of the people and groups I create in my head is that I can know another person or group of people. I cannot. Surely, as a social scientist I can form some conjectures or chart some typical patterns, but I cannot “know” another person or another group of people. Yet, if it is very convenient to act as if I can know that and to make broad assumptions about that person or group. Occasionally my predictions are true. When I visit a prison I will find that most inmates have learned to be very guarded. Yet, as any person who has been really present with inmates in any prison will tell you they are a very diverse group of people who do fit one’s preconceived notions. One of the reasons that folks serving in a war situation do not like to find or seem family photographs or photos on a phone of an “enemy” is that it makes them seem to much like them. This is the same reason we systematically teach folks getting ready for combat to call “the enemy” by such names ask “kooks”, “insurgents’, “Japs”, “Knouts” or whatever – anything to make them seem non-human and, thus, like us.
Last night I had a lovely note from a young man who was thanking me for never giving up on him. I wrote back that giving up on him would have been the same as giving up on myself and all others that I know. I further stated that my belief we are all interdependent; that we need each other to believe in us; to believe that we are more than we appear to me.
In that sense there are no real strangers. There are just people who show more of who they are whether it is comfortable for me or not. Sometimes I am the person show me that I am more than I thought I was!
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